Crying Suns

It's a neat indie game with a decent, just not very innovative story. I can't speak for other translaltions, but the German one is really not that good. You might find it funny, you might want to play in english, that's up to you. On normal it's been quite easy so far, thought you have to get used to the battle system a little. The belancing doesn't seem to be great. There are things which are simply much, much stronger than others, although I havn't tried all the ships yet. Generally more fleet = more better. Weapons hardly matter unless you got really good ones. Specialists are pretty OP. You get tons of recources by doing the right ground mission with the right specialist. The art style is very nice, the controls are a little weird, especially in battle, but you get used to it. The interactions with the crew and specialists are nice, but could be much more meaningfull. When you do something horrible you might lose some commandos... Bummer... The thread of mutiny would be way more interesting. Overall the game is decent, but honestly it doesn't live up to it's potential right now. It just still feels kinda like a beta. Not the worst beta you have seen, I hav experienced 0 bugs so far, but the concepts are just not thought through to the end yet. This combination of rogue-lite and RTS is kind of like FTL, but it is also very different in some ways, good ways. It's similarly addictive to me and I'd like to see an add-on that introduces some major improvements.

The visuals are gorgeous and the story is well-executed, but after a couple playthroughs the game runs out of surprises. In FTL, the game to which this is most often compared, it might be worth the risk to engage with a risky situation because there's a chance for a big payoff. In Crying Suns, the outcome of every scenario is always predetermined and once you know the "best" option, you can pick it every time. There's no incentive for instance to give the ship full of child refugees a chance because it's a trap every time. If there were a little more uncertainty the game would have a lot more playability (it hasn't even reached replayability, IMO).

I think the art and the story is the best thing about that game. It is pretty similar to FTL but in my opinion was not that much of a fun. But I liked the story very well. Some wrote that it has an open end etc. nah ... I think everything is explained well. I played it on easy because I was interested in story and not really in fights. Less cool weapons would have been nicer ... some of them seem to do nothing like the repair thing and the tesla(?) field generator ... it barely repairs anything and the field generator does not do that much of damage. What destroyed the immersion most was the fact that the same "event" in the game appeared too close to each other. In "sector 1" I had to make a decision and in "sector 2" the exact same event happened. Was somehow strange. Especially if you progress in story and your "npcs" should know about the event and its meaning. But as the rating indicates. It is a decent game. Not a bad but not outstanding.

-It's a neat spin on the FTL game concept. It's a nice casual experience probably best saved for getting on sale. -The big picture story was compelling enough to make it worth finishing. -The combat was not very compelling and quickly became a bit repetitive. -The encounters sector to sector are not bad. Some are pretty cool. But they repeat way too often. In my very first go through I got the exact same encounter multiple times, which was frustrating. -The reason to finish it is the story, the game-play and combat offer minimal replay value in my opinion. -It doesn't have the massive randomness and unpredictability of FTL. Things feel more manageable and controllable, but as a result there is less excitement. So there are trade offs. The enemy factions also feel more or less the same to fight against.

It's kind of a mixed bag. The narrative, atmosphere and visuals are made me push through to the end (I loved the story, despite many people hating the ending), but the actual gameplay feels like FTL-lite with little depth to it. The combat was probably the weakest element of the game - Highly repetitive rock-paper-scissors sort of system. Worth it for the story, but would wait for sale.